Tulips.... it's the flower for me!

when we were in seattle my hubby and i also went to the tulip festival in Skagit Valley, it's a tulip town. honestly it's my favorite flower, i just love it and i find it really simple and beautiful. i thought they were originally from japan til i search for its origin. and here's what i've searched:


Where Tulips Come From


It is a widely-spread misconception that tulips and other bulb flowers are native to Holland, growing wild in remote areas still. Nothing could be further from the truth. Almost no bulbous plants are native to this part of the world. For the origins of the tulip, we look to central Asia. This is site of their prime genetic center in the Tien-Shan and the Pamir Alai Mountain Ranges near modern day Islamabad, close to the border of Russia and China. From these areas, tulips spread to other regions including China and Mongolia to the east and to other regions to the west and northwest. A secondary genetic center developed in Azerbaijan and Armenia (Transcaucasia). From this area, tulips spread to locations which included far-flung parts of Europe. They are still encountered today growing wild in regions of the Balkans, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Switzerland and France. In nature there are probably no more than one hundred and fifty tulip species native to Europe. But that number depends largely on how one defines "wild species".

One of these tulips, Tulipa celsiana, is found wild in southern France in the region around Toulon and Cannes. This miniature tulip grows there between the rocks, under extremely dry conditions. It is visible only for a short growth and flowering period in the early spring. Flowering is quickly followed by withering, and the plant then survives as small bulbs that not only serve to help it survive the winter but the summer as well. In any event, the advance of the tulip in nature never got so far that it reached the Netherlands, not even within 500 miles


And here are a few pictures from the hundred variaties of tulip with their names that i took from that garden called Roozengaarde that we went to and the tulips are in different colors too;

oooppsss.... i thought it was only a few.. i took a lot of it pala!